This guide assumes you have little or no PvP experience, and we've got tips for avoiding PvP if you're a die-hard PvE-focused player who just wants to get this done and never enter a Battleground again.

First up, always have your orphan out in these battlegrounds. No exceptions - you wouldn't want to complete one of these objectives only to realize your orphan wasn't there to see it and your hard work was for nothing.

Assault a flag in Arathi Basin

This achievement can be completed very quickly and straightforwardly with a little nouse and speed. To assault a flag, you will need to be the first to reach one of the bases at the start of the match, or to assault a base later on in the match.

The view to the right is the start of the game from the Alliance end of the battleground, the Horde end looks much the same. Note the glowing flag in the foreground - that is your target, or one like it. Your tactic is simple, at first: mount up, be by the gate pointing at the base you plan to assault, and running in that direction. As the gate begins to open, you will pass through it, run directly in a straight line to the base you plan to assault, ignoring the roads but dodging any obstacles.

Hover your mouse over the flag, and as soon as the cogwheel turns from grey to gold, click it. The cast to capture a flag takes a short while, 6.5 seconds in Arathi Basin, and the first person to complete it will have assaulted a flag. Obviously, movement will break the cast, so keep still! There are a couple of tricks you can pull to prevent others from capturing, if you are feeling particularly dastardly. Paladinss can cast Blessing of Protection on a team-mate, which will prevent them from capturing, or a friendly priest can Leap of Faith another would-be capturer to ensure your success. Don't be surprised if this doesn't win you any friends - it's pretty shady behavior.

But, if you don't manage to be the first to the flag, all is far from lost. The flags will change hands fairly regularly throughout the match, so be around when there are big team fights, or furtively sneak around to try to capture undefended flags. All you need to do is to be the first one to complete the cast on a flag that is being captured.

There's a map to indicate the locations of the bases in Arathi Basin below, the red and the blue ones indicate bases that will generally go straight to the Horde or Alliance with no contest at the start - simply because they're right by the bases! If you don't succeed with those, and indeed, it's likely that they will be prime targets for players wishing to complete the achievement, then you should default to either Lumber Mill or Gold Mine. Thanks to the location of the two bridges, Alliance may be able to get to Gold Mine more quickly and Horde to Lumber Mill more quickly. This is simply because you can cut across land in a straight line without water getting in your way. If you are a Death Knight or a Shaman, or have water walking from another source, there will be no difference.

If you're trying to avoid doing PvP as part of the achievement, then definitely avoid the Blacksmith. This is the strategic center of the map, and usually the base that sees the most PvP action. Instead, you'd do well to head to Gold Mine or Lumber Mill, bearing in mind that there is a slight strategic advantage to taking Lumber Mill over Gold Mine, thanks to its elevation, so it's possible there'll be more fighting to be done there. That means, though, that Lumber Mill will likely change hands more often, so could be a good spot to assault the flag later in the match.

Assault a Tower in Alterac Valley

If you've read the above section on Arathi Basin, this is little different. In Alterac Valley, there are several towers, all of which have a flag on the top level. Just like in Arathi Basin, you'll need to be the first person to complete the cast of Capturing on a flag at the top of a tower. Unlike Arathi Basin, there is less clarity on which towers are the best to go for, and depending on your faction and region, you may have a harder or easier time getting this done.

The map above indicates the towers. The Alliance begin at the top of the map, Horde at the bottom. Horde will need to capture Alliance towers, as indicated, and Alliance will need to capture Horde towers. Unlike in Arathi Basin, the towers do not change hands regularly as an inherent part of the game. Instead, the flags are destroyed after the towers have been in conflict for four minutes.

During Children's Week on some regions, efforts will be made to ensure that they do change hands, but most regions are not so kind. It is reasonable to expect, therefore, that each tower can only be captured once. That being said, everyone will be heading for the first tower they can reach -- the ones in the center of the map. It may, therefore, be profitable to head directly for the second tower, and straight to the third and fourth towers if you are too late there.

Within the game itself, the towers and flag locations are as follows. Remember when looking at the below that you will be capturing the opposing faction's towers.

Horde Tower Appearance and Flag Location

Alliance Tower Appearance and Flag Location

It should be pretty clear to see that Horde have a far easier time reaching the Alliance flag than Alliance have reaching the Horde flag. The Horde towers are taller, and falling off the external ramps is very easily done indeed. It may well be advisable to practice climbing the ramps, if you can. Horde assaulting Alliance flags should have a far easier time, as all they need to do is find the door, ascend the internal staircase and turn around to see the flag behind them. Furthermore, the usual Alliance strategy does not involve defending their towers. However, should the Alliance decide to defend, their flag is far more defensible than the Horde ones. Once you have ascended the tower it is much the same as above, click the flag, and complete the 6.5 second Capturing cast to assault it. The same shady tricks as we mentioned for Arathi Basin work here, too, only 39 people will be really angry with you rather than 14.

Top Tip: Make sure you are right at the door at the start, and if you have a blink, a rocket jump, displacer beast, ghost wolf, disengage (turn away from the door), or any way to get out of the door quickly and therefore be mounted before the rest, use it. You cannot mount until you have left your starting cave.

Capture the Flag in Eye of the Storm

We've listed this one as harder than the others, as it will likely require you to engage in some actual PvP. The flag in Eye of the Storm is picked up in exactly the same way as the flags are captured in Arathi Basin and Alterac Valley. You need to run to the flag, and click on it, then the cast will eventually complete. Unlike in Arathi Basin and Alterac Valley, your task is far from over.

Once you have the flag on your back, you will need to run to one of the bases held by your team and onto the disc on the ground in order to capture it. Said disc can be seen in the image on the left - you'll notice that the flag came off my back onto the disc as it was captured. It is not enough to bring the flag to the base, you do need to locate this disc and run the flag across it.

Just as before, the two blue bases shown below are the ones generally captured first by Alliance, and the red are the ones usually captured first by the Horde. As you can see, the Alliance begin at the top, the Horde begin at the bottom. The flag is right in the middle of the map, on a narrow bridge. So, once you have the flag, you should be running straight towards a base that your faction holds.

Opening your Zone Map (Shift+M by default) can be very helpful in determining which bases are held. Only solid colored bases are safe, and you should ideally be looking for a clear base to return your flag - one where there's no combat. If your team holds no bases you can't capture flags, so help other players to capture bases if you fall behind. Bases capture just by having more of one faction alive inside them than of the other.

In this battleground, leaning on the kindness of strangers seems to work better than in others. Letting others capture the flag after you have your achievement objective completed is good etiquette, others may do it too. What's more, defending a held base and asking players without their orphan out whether you can capture a flag that they are bringing to you can work. That aside, fight in the middle and do your best to take the flag. Remember that only spells hitting you will break the capture cast, so if you aren't being focused you can take it in the middle of a battle!

Top Tip: when fighting on the bridge in the middle, ensure you're facing along the bridge. That way when you get knocked back you won't get knocked off.

Returning a fallen flag in Warsong Gulch

This is arguably the hardest objective of the four, and one of the very best to enlist the help of your friends. Unlike the others, this doesn't relate to speed or to getting a cast time off, but it does seem from my experience to be one of the ones where people are happy to help. It's regularly been the case in my Warsong Gulch instances during Children's week that a player from the opposing faction will come in to the flag room and let themselves be killed or drop the flag repeatedly so that people of the opposing faction can get the objective done. If you want to do that, try to target the opposing team's orphans and /point, or spam /wait or something along those lines. You can pick up the flag and right-click off the buff it gives you to drop it, allowing others to return it. It may not work, but I've been the good samaritan a couple of times today and it did go pretty well - someone from the opposing faction needs to figure out what you're doing.

That said, you can't always depend on the kindness of strangers, so let's talk about how best to go about it. You're looking for a person who looks like I do in the image above, with a flag on their back. They can drop the flag, as I mentioned, but unless you get lucky they're unlikely to. Instead you'll need to kill them, and then the flag will go from being on their back to standing on the ground next to them, like in the image to the left. Once it's there, you need to be the first to click it with the cogwheel to return it to its base. Job done!

Where are you most likely to find flag carriers? Well, that varies enormously. Good places to wait include the areas just outside the opposing base, as they could travel down the ramps or through the tunnels to exit with the flag. This is likely to be an area fraught with PvP combat, though, so not ideal if you're not keen on PvPing to get these achievements done. Other than that, you can see the image below that indicates their likeliest paths across the map, they are the sides indicated because of graveyard position: you want to run towards your graveyard with the flag so that any of your team who are ressing will join you in your bid to capture it.

That being said, they could be anywhere in the middle, and ideally, you want to kill them before they get back to their base with your flag. If you get into the situation where both teams have a flag and are holding it - common in normal Warsong Gulch battles, less common in Children's Week - they are likely to be within their base or on the roof. Simply follow the ramps up - they're more likely to be higher up - until you find them, and communicate their location to your team. You may well need more than one of you to take them out. Warsong Gulch in Children's Week is a very strange battleground.

As a final plea, from a PvPer, don't let your experiences during Children's Week allow you to have a negative impression of PvP. Children's week is not representative of those four battlegrounds in their usual state.

Comments

Comment by soley

on 2014-04-28T17:47:08-05:00

I already had a negative impression of PvP. So glad I'm done with it.

Comment by Kanariya

on 2014-04-28T17:53:46-05:00

Now that achievements are account-wide, the easiest way to do this I've found is to use a low level alt. PvP is a lot easier and more forgiving in low level bgs than it is at 90 as many classes do not have all their gap closers or CCs yet. If you have an alt around 45-70ish, I'd highly suggest doing this on that.

Comment by oliviadgrace

on 2014-04-28T17:56:51-05:00

Now that achievements are account-wide, the easiest way to do this I've found is to use a low level alt. PvP is a lot easier and more forgiving in low level bgs than it is at 90 as many classes do not have all their gap closers or CCs yet. If you have an alt around 45-70ish, I'd highly suggest doing this on that.

It's a good tip, but very dependent indeed on the class/spec of that alt! Some are definitely more powerful than others at lower level. Nonetheless, thanks for mentioning it! :)

Comment by tumppu75

on 2014-04-28T19:03:22-05:00

Thanks on the account wide thingy. Just did 1/4 (AB) of this as lvl 90 DK only through deathgripping an alliance flag carrier as she was about to be killed by around 4 other guys in our team. Some nastiness was commented but a return is a return and an achi as an achi :) Now waiting for the deserter flag to disappear and on to new disappointments in pvp :P

Comment by rinkworks

on 2014-04-28T21:05:35-05:00

Might be worth explicitly stating, in the early paragraph about always having your orphan out, that if you die, your orphan doesn't persist (like pets do) and must be resummoned.

Good luck to everyone trying to do this. Try not to be discouraged. I despise PvP, and I'm terrible at it, and I don't have the gear for it, but I did manage to get this last year. The four objectives take multiple, even many attempts apiece. But it IS doable.

Comment by Tesslin

on 2014-04-29T06:38:21-05:00

In Alterac Valley, I found that it's easiest to just go for one of the furthest towers available. I couldn't reach the others fast enough because of paladins and death knights with a mount speed increase, but a lot of people kind of stayed at the two earlier towers so I was the first in one of the last two. If you're a stealther, keep in stealth until someone else reaches the tower. They will take aggro from the mobs when trying to assault it, and then you can safely do that yourself without being interrupted.

Oh, and are you sure it's enough for the achievement to assault a neutral flag in Arathi Basin? In the comments on the achievement page it says that the flag needs to be controlled by the other faction, but Blizzard might have changed it of course. I was lucky enough to get to assault one that was in fact controlled by the others, just to be sure :)

Comment by ahunter8056

on 2014-04-29T17:20:22-05:00

Well after about 4 attempts this year, I finally got the worst achievement in the game. Yay me.

Comment by otakuryoga

on 2014-04-30T02:26:50-05:00

don't worry..my experiences this week as i try to do this achievement could not possibly lower my opinion of PvP

Comment by tumppu75

on 2014-04-30T03:32:50-05:00

@Tesslin: Neutral is fine, hence the rush for the first flags in AB.

I pretty much one-shotted all the other ones, but had to play a few games of EOTS before landing a good group and the game was pretty much a face-roll for Horde, even with 3 or 4 of us "nanny achi folks" as the pvp crowd so lovingly put it, also, getting the 100 honorable kills achi during one game drew some "hearty" cheers from them too. :)

So, after few years in the works, what a long, strange road it was.

Comment by Azrile

on 2014-04-30T11:32:40-05:00

@Tesslin: Neutral is fine, hence the rush for the first flags in AB.

I pretty much one-shotted all the other ones, but had to play a few games of EOTS before landing a good group and the game was pretty much a face-roll for Horde, even with 3 or 4 of us "nanny achi folks" as the pvp crowd so lovingly put it, also, getting the 100 honorable kills achi during one game drew some "hearty" cheers from them too. :)

So, after few years in the works, what a long, strange road it was.

The irony of this is that doing random battlegrounds ( and not RBGs and Arena) is like the lowest part of PvP. Any ´pvp´ player who is doing random BGs has no reason to say anything to anyone since they are obviously avoiding the real pvp parts of the game.

I am so glad I got this achievement back when it was new and most of the BGs were filled with other people who were only there to get the achieves. I enjoy doing BGs, but not when you are specifically trying to accomplish a certain task. It makes winning turn into losing if you don´t accomplish it.

Comment by Jkpman

on 2014-04-30T12:29:51-05:00

As a final plea, from a PvPer, don't let your experiences during Children's Week allow you to have a negative impression of PvP. Children's week is not representative of those four battlegrounds in their usual state.

lots of clueless people selfishly trying to achieve their own goals is perfectly representative of those battlegrounds in their usual state, at least for the random finder versions it is.You should have said Random Battlegrounds are not representative of those four battlegrounds in their usual RBG state in the same way as LFR is not representative of raiding in its Normal or Heroic state.

That said for achievement hunters, don't be deterred, If you find it too busy earlier on in the holiday try later in the week.

Comment by Tachigami

Comment by Jujuzita

I hate the fact that I keep repeating the Warsong Gulch one and seems to be bugged for me. Orphan out, flag returned...and nothing

Comment by AceHuldarr

on 2014-05-02T15:44:09-05:00

I'd swear I assaulted a neutral flag twice in AB and still didn't get credit. Heck, I capped the flag in WG and of course that's not the condition.

Comment by Farmbuyer

on 2014-05-04T12:54:37-05:00

I have been trying and failing to do this for five years running. It's never the opposing team that stops me. It's griefers from my own factions being jackholes because there's no negative consequences.

Comment by Smyslov

on 2014-05-06T18:49:48-05:00

Now that achievements are account-wide, the easiest way to do this I've found is to use a low level alt. PvP is a lot easier and more forgiving in low level bgs than it is at 90 as many classes do not have all their gap closers or CCs yet. If you have an alt around 45-70ish, I'd highly suggest doing this on that.

It's a good tip, but very dependent indeed on the class/spec of that alt! Some are definitely more powerful than others at lower level. Nonetheless, thanks for mentioning it! :)

I'll second this.

A new Death Knight is a strong choice because of the following advantages: excellent starting gear; random BG queues confined exclusively to those you need for the achievement; and, perhaps most importantly, the On a Pale Horse passive attained at level 61. Increased mounted speed make the AB and AV objectives markedly easier.

Comment by Laichzeit

on 2014-05-07T15:10:30-05:00

Now that achievements are account-wide, the easiest way to do this I've found is to use a low level alt. PvP is a lot easier and more forgiving in low level bgs than it is at 90 as many classes do not have all their gap closers or CCs yet. If you have an alt around 45-70ish, I'd highly suggest doing this on that.

It's a good tip, but very dependent indeed on the class/spec of that alt! Some are definitely more powerful than others at lower level. Nonetheless, thanks for mentioning it! :)

I'll second this.

A new Death Knight is a strong choice because of the following advantages: excellent starting gear; random BG queues confined exclusively to those you need for the achievement; and, perhaps most importantly, the On a Pale Horse passive attained at level 61. Increased mounted speed make the AB and AV objectives markedly easier.

Eh, I mean yes it's a good thing to have a DK with on a pale horse (mine is 59 atm, the one I used to complete this achievement that is), but what I found interesting in low level bgs was the fact that no one knew where the orphan came from. Whether they really meant it or not it's another topic of discussion, but this is what my husband and I did, along having fun doing low level bgs. Surprisingly, it only took us 5 BGs (had to redo WG I believe, for my husband because I was swift enough to return flag while he wasn't, but we were keeping tabs and defending).

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